Beautiful day for the French team ART GP in Formula 2! Victor Martins won his first victory at Silverstone on Sunday, while Théo Pourchaire finished third and closed the gap on the Dane Frederik Vesti (Prema), leader of the championship.
Martins, a member of the Alpine Academy, a program for young drivers from the eponymous F1 team, started from pole position and finally won ahead of Barbadian Zane Maloney (Rodin Carlin) despite a five-second penalty. “I had a lot of fun this weekend, from Friday with good free practice, then pole position. There was better to do in the sprint on Saturday (7th), but I quickly forgot about it to focus on the race. And I thought it would be the right day. I feel like this is the start of something. We must continue in this direction,” said Martins.
The 2022 Formula 3 world champion is making a good comeback in the provisional championship standings, climbing from eighth to fifth place, with 88 units on the clock.
His teammate and compatriot Théo Pourchaire, himself, carried out the good operation of the day. Second in the sprint on Saturday behind Vesti, he took third place after starting in eighth position. The Habs, reserve driver for the Alfa Romeo team in F1, took advantage of the Dane’s retirement on Sunday to return to just six lengths in the championship with 129 points, against 135 for the leader.
“The team did a great job. I’m happy to have reduced the gap, but it’s still a third place, it doesn’t have more flavor,” said Pourchaire. The British GP was the ninth round of 14 of the F2 season. The drivers then meet in Hungary (Budapest) in two weeks and then in Belgium (Spa-Francorchamps) the following weekend.
